Welcome to the Original Pick-your-Own Strawberry Farm near Hartbeespoort Dam

Need to contact us?

If you hadn't noticed, there is a cold front that has rolled through the country. Who would have thought that this close to Christmas South Africa would get to experience snow - is a white Christmas maybe on the cards? The changes in the global climate have become a lot more noticeable. A few seasons ago, we experienced a lot of weekends that were rained out, yet, the last three or four seasons have seen less and less rain- especially over weekends.

This has lead to us irrigating more - our usually relatively full dam is looking rather sad and almost empty as we speak. Monday and Tuesday see us getting our dam filled again, as it is our water turn in the area.

As you know, we run an organic farm. We are continually looking at new ways of cutting down on our waste and reducing our carbon footprint. Always looking at how to recycle in a different way, in a way that is more positive for our fields and the rest of the environment. If you head into our fields this morning, you will find a few of the walkways look rather different, don't be alarmed, it is not a rubbish dump, we are looking at reusing our cardboard boxes by chopping them up, and putting them down in the walk ways for few reasons - firstly it's recycling, secondly it's to help keep the ground less muddy underfoot, thirdly we would like to keep as much of the moisture trapped in the soil, to reduce the evaporation that we experience, fourthly at the end of the season, the cardboard breaks down and will be ploughed into the ground, helping us to break up the clay soil a little.

Our farming is evolving slowly as we learn new things and experiment a lot, yes, with us there is a lot of trial and error. Over the last few years the face of our farm has changed, we have implemented a different watering system, expanded our fields, made use of different farming practices and as always, kept it organic. The kitchen uses a lot of eggs, bananas and citrus fruit. We wash the eggshells and soak them overnight, remove the shells from the water and dry them. The shells themselves get crushed by hand (rather chunky) and these get added to the fields, to help deter pests, break up the soil slightly, and add their nutrient content to the ground. The water that the shells soaked in gets filtered and has some Epsom Salts added, then sprayed into the fields, adding a good dose of nutrients for the plants. We go through the same process with the banana peels, except that the peels themselves are added to our compost heap, and we don't add the Epsom Salts to that water. As for the citrus, we boil up the peels and off cuts with water, allow it to steep for a couple of weeks. This has a good nutrient content and the oils keep a bunch of pests at bay.

If you like what we do, and feel that this may just be the kind of life you would like, talk to us. Everyone has their price..

Yes, we will be open for picking today, from 7:30 a.m.

Embrace the cooler weather, come out this morning and eat your fill of our delicious strawberries in the fields.